Gianni Schicchi – the third and final installment of Puccini’s Il trittico – is to be broadcast tonight (Friday 29 June) on BBC Four at 8pm.

The one-act comedy tells the tale of the eponymous Gianni Schicchi who attempts to profit from the will of the recently deceased Buoso. The libretto is based on an incident in Dante's The Divine Comedy and, among other musical highlights, contains Lauretta's gorgeous aria 'O mio babbino caro', sung in Richard Jones's production by Ekaterina Siurina.

This broadcast follows earlier broadcasts of Il tabarro and Suor Angelica, the latter of which is still available to watch for a limited time on BBC iPlayer. The trio have also recently been released on DVD.

The first details of the Deloitte Ignite line-up, curated by the artist Yinka Shonibare have been released.

This year's festival is a celebration of traditional African and avant-garde arts and culture, expressing Africa’s global contribution to the contemporary arts world.

A collision of dance, music and film, the three-day event will include a concert by legendary drummer Tony Allen, a club night with BBC Radio 1Xtra's DJ Edu, an exhibition of contemporary instruments made by artist Victor Gama and screenings of African films in Covent Garden Piazza. Workshops will also be offered as well as exhibitions of work by photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Yinka himself.

I love the Royal Opera House: the house itself, the buildings and bustling Covent Garden location. In one respect, however, the Royal Opera House is unfortunately lacking - it does not look out over a serene natural beauty spot.

The opposite is true of the Oslo Opera House, home to Den Norske Opera og Ballett. Opened in 2008, the venue isn’t so much by the Oslofjord as emerging from it; sweeping elegantly right out of the water. Imagine my delight, then, when our colleagues from the company's Education Department contacted us about our Write an Opera programme, with an invitation to collaborate on a project at their stunning opera house. This follows our visit closer to home to Gainsborough Primary School to see the result of their projects.

Write an Opera is, in a nutshell, a programme that shows teachers on how to create an opera with their students. It begins with a week-long residential course for teachers each summer, equipping participants with the skills, knowledge and resources they need to devise and stage an opera, from scratch with a group of students. Over the years, a number of Norwegian teachers have attended the course and enthusiastically taken the project back to schools across Norway.

This summer, a school in Eide, Norway presented its 10th original opera devised and staged by students. In celebration of the anniversary, Den Norske Opera og Ballett invited the school to perform the premiere of its opus no. 10 at the Oslo Opera House itself. Around this momentous event, they curated a weekend of performances, workshops and seminars exploring new opera and the Write an Opera approach. The Royal Opera House’s main role was to deliver a day and a half of practical workshops for teachers, giving participants a flavour of the level 1 Write an Opera course. This presented considerable challenges, as Write an Opera level 1 is usually delivered over the course of a week, comprising no fewer than 66 hours of workshops. We had to find a way to distill this into under 10 hours. To help us on this mission, we drew on the collective expertise of a wonderful team of artists: Rhiannon Newman-Brown (designer), Omar Shahryar (director) and Richard Taylor (composer).

And so it was that Rhiannon, Omar, Richard and I had an inspiring time in Oslo last weekend, undertaking an invigorating dash through some of the principles and activities at the heart of Write an Opera. On Saturday morning, we met the group of 25 Norwegian teachers and arts professionals for the very first time. By noon on Sunday, they had created a mini opera telling the story of a memory stick that holds the secret to eternal happiness! I salute them all for their willingness, enthusiasm and talent.

Congratulations to Eide School for their 10th Write an Opera anniversary and to our colleagues at Den Norske Opera og Ballett for producing such a stimulating weekend of activities exploring Write an Opera. We will continue our support for young people’s creativity and learning through Write an Opera, in England, Norway and beyond, over the coming months and years.

David McVicar's acclaimed Royal Opera production of Les Troyens is to be streamed and broadcast live to the UK and Europe on 5 July, starting at 5pm (GMT).

The performance will be streamed online to UK viewers via The Space and broadcast via TV channel Mezzo to across mainland Europe, allowing audiences internationally the chance to see one of the most anticipated events of the London 2012 Festival. The performance will also be available around the world on demand on The Space from Monday 9 July until the end of October, and shown internationally on the big screen in November as part of the 2012/13 Cinema season.

Hector Berlioz's opera is an adaptation of Virgil's Aeneid. It tells the story of the fall of Troy and the subsequent travels of Aeneas (Énée) to Carthage. The staging - transposed to the 1800s - matches the work's epic scope, with Es Devlin's designs featuring an impressive fire-breathing Trojan horse, fashioned from the machinery of war. Bryan Hymel and Eva-Maria Westbroek star.

Les Troyens is sold out aside from returns, but for those who would like to feel for themselves the heat from the Trojan horse, 67 day tickets are available on the day of each performance. These can be bought from the Box Office from 10am.

Leanne Benjamin, Carlos Acosta, Ed Watson, Sarah Lamb, Nehemiah Kish, Steven McRae, Federico Bonelli and Marianela Nuñez will all perform in what will be Monica Mason’s last production as Director of The Royal Ballet. The former dancer retires this year after a career that has spanned 55 years as both artist and administrator.

The performances will also be Tamara’s last appearances as a member of The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden before taking up the post of Director at English National Ballet.

The collaboration is part of the Cultural Olympiad’s London 2012 Festival and features three works created by seven leading choreographers, including Royal Ballet Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor, Kim Brandstrup and Christopher Wheeldon. Music for the three pieces is by Jonathan Dove, Nico Muhly and Anna Nicole composer Mark-Anthony Turnage.

Bringing together new dance, music, poetry and visual arts, the collaboration celebrates creativity across art forms, drawing on inspiration found in Italian painter Titian’s masterpieces.

The production of Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 opens on the 14 July, and will be broadcast live across the country for free as part of BP Summer Big Screens on 16 July. The exhibition opens at the National Gallery on 11 July and runs until 23 September. Admission to this is also free.

The Royal Opera House is hosting a wide range of events and performances as part of the London 2012 Festival, including a water-based opera, The Owl and the Pussycat, and The Olympic Journey, an exhibition focusing on the history of the Olympic Games. Click here for full listings.

The new work will be seen both on the water and banks of London’s canals and waterways, stopping for performances at various points as it travels from west to east. This exciting new work is part of the 'Secrets' programme, a series of extraordinary site-specific collaborations taking place in a range of hidden spaces across the capital in summer 2012, led by major artists and leading cultural organizations and presented by the Mayor of London. Further information on these events can be found at www.molpresents.com/secrets.

Featuring a libretto from ex-Monty Python Terry Jones, and a newly commissioned score from Oscar-winning The Full Monty composer Anne Dudley, it promises to be an event like no other.

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Mozart’s Don Giovanni will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 this Saturday at 6pm. Francesca Zambello’s production of the opera was last performed at Covent Garden in February 2012 as part of a trio of operas with librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte.

Don Giovanni, first staged in 1787, rapidly became one of the most performed operas in Europe, and the title role has become iconic . Seductive and charming, ruthless and vengeful; Don Giovanni is a challenging role for any singer. As part of an ongoing project, photographer Sim Canetty-Clarke followed Gerald Finley backstage as he prepared to sing the role of the licentious libertine.

Westbroek, who has sung the role of Cassandre in Netherlands Opera’s Les Troyens, is looking forward to immersing herself in Berlioz’s unique sound world once again. "It’s absolutely overwhelming, amazing music – once you get used to it," she says. "It’s in a world of its own. And Les Troyens is a tremendous work."

Westbroek will be singing role of Didon, the proud Queen who creates a utopian kingdom only to see it destroyed by the man she loves. "I wanted to sing Didon very much. Cassandre is phenomenal, but Didon has such glorious music, and the story – it’s divinely beautiful!"

Westbroek has hardly been typecast in her career – in fact her last two appearances at Covent Garden could hardly have been more different from each other, let alone from Berlioz’s African queen. In February 2011 she created the larger-than-life tabloid star Anna Nicole in The Royal Opera’s eye-catching production of Turnage’s opera about modern celebrity. At the beginning of the 2011/12 Season she sang the frustrated, unhappy barge-owner’s wife Giorgetta in Richard Jones’s production of Il tabarro. What united these two performances was Westbroek’s modern sensibility; in each case she brought out the inner life of a feisty independent woman treated badly by the men her life. But a grander, more epic tragedy befalls the two women central to Berlioz’s version of The Aeneid. How will Westbroek deal with a role that demands a touch of the old-fashioned tragedienne?

"I think it will take some work and that’s why I’m so glad to be doing it. It will be exciting to be a real tragedienne, not just to be very naturalistic and earthy."

Previous Didons have included substantial sopranos such as Blanche Thebom, Josephine Veasey, Tatiana Troyanos, Christa Ludwig, Régine Crespin and Janet Baker (definitely not someone you could imagine spending a night of passion in a cave). Does Westbroek think she can summon the requisite regal hauteur? She roars with laughter. "I suppose I will have to find my dignified side. It’s true that I always do roles like Katerina Ismailova (Shostakovich) and Anna Nicole (Mark-Anthony Turnage) who are not the most dignified people. They’re full of passion and earthly desires; they’re not regal at all."

She can’t resist pointing out one unintended phrase that Berlioz gave to Didon: ‘Ma carrière est fini’. "I love that line; it makes me giggle. Even the best singers are a little scared of singing those words!"

For a soprano, how do the roles of Cassandre and Didon compare in terms of difficulty? "Cassandre is very out-there and dramatic all the time and it’s demanding of a certain part of your voice. Her music is declamatory in an aggressive way, in the middle voice. Didon is declamatory but she doesn’t have that aggression, so you don’t have to be so loud in your very low middle voice. And she’s more lyrical. Didon’s music is just gorgeous."

Of all her predecessors, Westbroek makes special mention of Régine Crespin. "She is the epitome of French music and French singing. As well as being regal she is so sensual; I love her very much. But I also think the world of Janet Baker. It just shows that two very different voices and characters can make a stunning Didon."

Does she have ideas about how she’ll characterize her own Didon? "I’m always very influenced by people – the conductor, for instance", she says. "Working with Tony is always something very special and you always feel like you become a better singer with him. And the director also gives me new ideas and other ways to look at things."

Suor Angelica - the second installment from Puccini's Il Trittico - is to be broadcast this evening (22 June) on BBC Four at 8pm.

The one-act opera tells the tale of love, loss and religious redemption set in a children's hospital run by nuns. The tragic titular character is sung by Ermonela Jaho. The Albanian soprano will sing in select performances of La rondine in July 2013.